Take FULL responsibility for everything in life.
Stop reading. Go to a busy train station, lie down on the floor for 10 seconds, then stand up and carry on with your day. People may wonder what you're doing for a few seconds, but soon they’ll go back to focusing on their own problems. Everyone is concerned with their own lives; no one is going to achieve your dreams for you. People rarely judge your failures, as they are busy judging their own. We are all works in progress; support is out there to help with our journey, but that also comes down to taking responsibility for our own well-being. You are responsible for reducing your future self problems and increasing their happiness. You are fully responsible for your life—only you can change it. If you have hope for change but do not have a detailed plan for this change, it’s actually hopelessness and avoidance of change. “What you do not actively change, you actively choose.”.
The world owes you nothing. The world is tough. You are only human so guaranteed to make mistakes. Couragegiously attempt to make better decisions, and strive to know what you are doing. To learn from your mistakes. To see what you can do differently. To self-reflect instead of passing blame. You owe it to yourself to live a life you can be proud of, relentlessly striving toward your best self. We are responsible for everything that happens in our adult lives. Even the people who care about us deeply have their own problems and cannot live our lives for us. You are solely responsible for your happiness.
We can only become our best selves when we fully accept personal responsibility. When we take ownership of everything that happens to us as adults, we can reduce future regrets and increase contentment. You are fully responsible today for the ratio of regret vs. contentment you'll have on your deathbed. Life is a gift at which we get one go, and no refunds. Look after yourself, take responsibility for your happiness into your own hands.
Passing blame will hurt you more than anybody else.
There’s always an excuse, someone or something to blame, but these only provide temporary relief. Passing blame steals your ability to lower future regrets and increase contentment. Legendary basketball coach John Wooden said “you're not a failure until you start assigning blame”. When you pass blame, you stop learning from your mistakes—you deny them. Even if you’re only partly at fault, taking responsibility for the entire situation can be beneficial. Passing blame is a cunning thief, robbing you of the ability to become your best self. This doesn't come naturally in a culture that encourages blame, but if your focus is growth (if we are not growing we are dying), you must become greedy for responsibility knowing it fuels your growth and is the key to happiness and well-being. Grow, away from regret and more towards contentment.
A victim mindset keeps us trapped. You can be angry at people who have wronged you, but use it to fuel your progression in life, do not let whoever wronged you steal your happiness. Having the courage to assume responsibility for your emotional reactions to people, criticism, and situations, opens up the chance to identify the instance when you are (if only partially) at fault - giving you ways to golden information to improve.
Fully responsible but never alone
Taking responsibility for your life includes seeking support from others. We are social creatures who need social connection to be mentally well, whether it be professional mental health support, local community support, a councilling texting service, online therapy, a church, or from self-help books.
Life it too short not to take responsibility for our lives.
How often do you hear or say that “time flies”? Years fly by at an increasing pace. This scares us, but regret on our deathbed should scare us more. Taking responsibility for making our limited days on this planet add together cannot be underestimated. By ‘adding together,’ I mean doing something today that benefits your tomorrow. If you do this most days, that year you know ‘flies by’ provides life-transformational results—results that lower your regrets and increase your contentment.
Nobody can take the actions you know to guarantee a better life for yourself for you, actions that help you feel content at the end of your day. Action that contributes to positive momentum. Motivation comes after action, not before. We all know the power of positive momentum and downhill spirals in life. Seize the day, make your days count towards something, or let them ‘fly-by’ and produce ‘what-ifs’ and regrets.
You are responsible for talking to yourself kindly, the same way you talk to a loved one.
We are responsible for increasing our capacity to treat ourselves how we would treat a loved one and for making our self-talk more friendly. We must also increase our capacity to be proud of ourselves for every tiny step we take in our desired direction. Knowing one step in front of the other is the only way—for everybody.
You are responsible for breaking down your goals into achievable steps.
If we do not break down our goals into tiny steps, we guarantee ourselves failure. Every single person has to break their goals into small actions, knowing that every single achievement is always accomplished by putting one foot in front of the other. The moon landing was achieved one step at a time.
Write a to-do list every day, even if it is one productive thing. Even ‘a day off to relax’ should be written down.
Take responsibility for writing a to-do list every day, knowing they are great tool to become the best version of yourself. When you put your goals on paper, you significantly increase the chance they happen. Every single tick on your to-do list is felt in contentment and satisfaction when you lay your head down at night. Picture 5 years from now a pile of to-do lists that massively increased the quality of your life because you took small actions daily.
Delaying action is self-harm.
You are responsible for completing the tasks you have been delaying, recognizing that they weigh on your mental health and well-being and that ignored problems only grow. Reflect on how you feel once you finally do what you have been avoiding, the pain of avoidance Action which significantly improve our life often take far less time than people spend doom scrolling through social media.
We are responsible for our levels of suffering (different to pain). “You’re going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don’t have to suffer so much. You’re not choosing the pain, but you’re choosing the suffering.” We often have no control over the events in life that bring us pain, but we do have control over choosing if they allow us to suffer unnecessarily.
A trick: Dedicate 10 minutes of your day to worrying and ruminate, always doing so with pen and paper in hand. Analyse if the worry is in your control, or if it is not, is there anything we can do about what is troubling us? A worry without action is useless and helps nobody. Worrying about other’s has never helped a single person in history, as a worry is only a thought. If we put it on paper, it may become an action, at very least it’s a weight off our minds.
Responsibility for your shifting your habits in a healthier direction.
Habits become your life. Your daily habits form your mood, not what happens to you in your life. You are responsible each day to create habits, and maintain habits you know will benefit your future self, and to slowly chip away at those habits you know will hurt your future self. Habits take consistent hard effort to form for some weeks, but when formed become like brushing your teeth, requiring little effort. Habits are the architecture of your life and dictate how you feel about yourself, and they are your responsibility on a daily basis.
Responsibility to learn from others.
As your choices lead to your consequences, so it’s important to make informed decisions. Take lessons seriously from those who have walked regrettable paths. Whether it's a workaholic who regrets not spending more time with their family or someone who has abused alcohol and lost everything, take their advice seriously when determining your own work-life balance or relationship with alcohol. Fellow human beings riddled with regrets and "what-ifs" have valuable lessons to share—heed them. If you want to lose weight, take the lesson from every person who has tried a 'fad diet' and found that they don’t work. Take their experience seriously, or you will contribute to your future regrets when you inevitably regain the weight after choosing a notorious 'fad diet' that fails everyone who tries it.
“All you have it was it happening RIGHT now, enjoy it one-way or another. If it’s uncomfortable have comfort in knowing it will pass”
